Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday January 15, 2013 @06:21PM
from the sharing-is-not-legally-caring dept.

New submitter trekkie314 writes "Reuters reports that a Manhattan District Judge has ruled that AFP and the Washington Post infringed a photographer's copyright by re-using photos he posted on his Twitter account. The judge rejected AFP's claim that a Twitter post was equivalent to making the images available for anyone to use (drawing a distinction between allowing users to re-tweet within the social network and the commercial use of content). The judge also ruled against the photographer's request that he be compensated for each person that viewed the photos, ruling instead that damages would be granted once per infringing image only. This last point might have interesting implications in file-sharing cases — can it set a precedent against massive judgments against peer-to-peer file-sharers?"

This seems like a fair and informed judgment to me. I don't think the photographer could harmed more by each view, and the distinction between re-use on Twitter and re-use elsewhere is a nuance I wouldn't expect most judges to understand. Let's hope he gets some filesharing cases and tells the RIAA they're owed $0.99 per song and no more.